Chef Marcus Wareing believes that Christmas is the perfect time to get your
children involved in the kitchen

Most parents have tried the old “if you don’t behave, Father Christmas will not visit” trick. But Marcus Wareing and his wife Jane have taken it to another level. In their south west London house, there is a “santa cam” situated high up on the wall of the kitchen, watching every move of Jessie, their 6-year-old daughter.

Jane says: “Who is up there, who is watching naughty children?”

Jesse replies with some glee: “Santa!”

She does not seem to realise it is the just the burglar alarm. But the trick is working. She is impeccably behaved and mucking in making mince pies with her father, the two-michelin-star chef. More than that, she is managing to pipe a frangipane mixture pretty deftly onto the top of the pies.

I have been invited to the Wareing household to watch the children (with some guidance from their father) make mince pies to prove that not only are Christmas dishes are the perfect way to get children interested in cooking, but they could actually lower your blood pressure at this time of year.

Wareing is remarkably sanguine about the countdown to December 25 – although that may be something to do with the fact that Jane is charge of cooking the turkey and trimmings on the big day, while he disappears to work at the Berkeley, which will be serving lunch to 70 guests.

“It’s wrong not to show your face even for only an hour or so,” he says. “My staff are going to be there. It’s important I am too.”

He adds: “Nobody notices that I actually leave the house. They are all buried in toys.”

The other trick to a stress-free Christmas meal, he says, is to take the legs off the turkey. The legs are boned, stuffed with sausage meat, rolled and poached. He says that anyone at home can roast the legs separately. “It cooks so much quicker, and who wants a dry turkey?”

This may sound a bit cheffy, but the mince pie recipe is satisfyingly child-friendly, involving some cheating (they are using shop-bought mincemeat which is jazzed up with the addition of orange zest, grated apple and treacle), as well as a lot of elbow-grease.

Jessie’s older brother, Archie 9, is mixing the pastry ingredients using a wooden spatula, not an electric whisk. “It’s the way my mother did it,” says Marcus, “and for kids there are too many gadgets around – and it’s a good way for them to see how it comes together.”

Wareing has joined up with other restaurateurs to publish child-friendly recipes on the the Great British Chefs website, which has launched an app called Cooking with Kids Christmas, in association with Tesco.

One contributor is Colin McGurran, chef at Winteringham Fields in Lincolnshire, who has three girls under the age of 10 and is passionate about teaching them where their food comes from (the Christmas turkey is currently pecking around in his back garden). He also believes children are never too young to be involved in the kitchen.

“On Christmas morning, after the kids have opened their presents and eaten their chocolate from their stockings, we say 'right, now we’re all going to spend two hours cooking’,” says McGurran. “It’s got to be fun, but even peeling carrots can be fun, especially if they have come from the garden.”

He thinks that not much beats the joy of sitting down at Christmas lunch and all the children know they have played a part, even the five-year-old. “It’s such a great family bonding experience. We all sit their and praise each other’s efforts,” he says.

As well as helping with the main meal, another way children can be involved is by making edible presents. One of McGurran’s recipes is chocolate truffle lollipops, which are placed into florist’s foam in a flowerpot to create a sort of chocolate topiary arrangement.

The Wareing children are ahead of the game. Jake, 12, has already made a chocolate yule log, decorated with holly from the garden, without any help from his parents. He says it was a hit with his classmates.

It was not a recipe from his father but one from Mary Berry, the presenter of Great British Bake Off. “She’s a legend,” says Wareing senior. It turns out Berry is not the only grande dame of the cookery world that he is a fan of.

Last year, they tried out one of Delia Smith’s Christmas-cake-ingredients-in-a-box that was being sold by Waitrose. The Wareing kids and their mother made it together. “It worked very well,” Jane says, who addsd that the occasional cheat is crucial if you want to enjoy the festive period.

“And you can’t knock Delia,” says Marcus. “Delia is amazing.” Some Christmas traditions are handed down from generation to generation -- and Delia is one of them.